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the new political regime might turn out to be more socialist in an increasingly multicultural America and more right-wing-nationalist in a mass-migration-troubled Europe, with the continents drifting apart ideologically instead of imitating each other.

all this speculation assumes that the stalemate will end relatively quickly, that with a discredited establishment harassed by not-quite-ready populisms, something has to give. No iron law of history requires that to happen

there are plenty of historical precedents for a situation in which a system stalemates or stagnates for generations, where revolts and reform programs founder again and again, where a disliked or despised elite holds on to power for a long time against divided and chaotic forms of populism.

a possible Western future in which the presently besieged establishment, “with its near-monopoly of wealth, political power, expertise and media influence, completely and successfully represses the numerically greater but politically weaker working-class majority. If that is the case, the future North America and Europe may look a lot like Brazil and Mexico, with nepotistic oligarchies clustered in a few fashionable metropolitan areas but surrounded by a derelict, depopulated, and despised ‘hinterland.’”

Even the relatively favored areas had rainfall of just 20 to 40 centimeters (8 to 15 inches)—where 20 centimeters (8 inches) is regarded as the absolute minimum to sustain agriculture—and the national average was less than 10 centimeters (4 inches)

Considering only “agricultural Syria,” the population is about five times as dense as Ohio or Belgium, but it does not have Ohio’s or Belgium’s other means of generating income.

Syria is not just a piece of land; it is densely populated. When I first visited Syria in 1946, the total population was less than 3 million. In 2010, it reached nearly 24 million.

The bottom line is that the population/resource ratio is out of balance. While there has been a marginal increase of agricultural land and more efficient cropping with better seed, neither has kept up with population growth.

During Ottoman rule the population was organized in two overlapping ways. First, there was no “Syria” in the sense of a nation-state, but rather provinces (Turkish: pashaliqs) that were centered on the ancient cities. The most important of these were Damascus, which may be the oldest permanently settled city in the world today, and Aleppo.

throughout its centuries of rule, the Ottoman Empire generally was content to have its subjects live by their own codes of behavior. It did not have the means or the incentive to intrude into their daily lives. Muslims, whether Turk or Arab or Kurd, shared with the imperial government Islamic mores and law. Other ethnic/religious “nations” (Turkish: millet) were self-governing except in military and foreign affairs.

the same groups also moved into mainly Muslim cities and towns, where they tended to live in more or less segregated neighborhoods that resembled medieval European urban ghettos or modern American “Little Italys” or “Chinatowns.”

Since this system was spelled out in the Quran and the Traditions (Hadiths) of the Prophet, respecting it was legally obligatory for Muslims. Consequently, when the Syrian state took shape, it inherited a rich, diverse, and tolerant social tradition.

the French created a “Greater” Lebanon from the former autonomous adjunct provinces (Turkish: sanjaqs) of Mount Lebanon and Beirut. To make it their anchor in an otherwise hostile Levant, they aimed both to make it Christian-dominated and big enough to exist as a state. But these aims were incompatible: the populations they added, taken from the pashaliq of Damascus, were mainly Muslim, so the French doomed Lebanon to be a precariously unbalanced society.

the French reversed course. They united the country as defined in the mandate but attempted to change its social and cultural orientation. Their new policy aimed to supplant the common language, Arabic, with French, to make French customs and law the exemplar, to promote Catholicism as a means to undercut Islam, and to favor the minorities as a means to control the Muslim majority. It was inevitable that the native reaction to these intrusions would be first the rise of xenophobia and then the spread of what gradually became a European style of nationalism.

When French policies did not work and nationalism began to offer an alternate vision of political life, the French colonial administration fell back on violence. Indeed throughout the French period—in contrast to the relatively laissez-faire rule of the Ottoman Empire—violence was never far below the outward face of French rule.

the “peace” the French achieved was little more than a sullen and frustrated quiescence; while they did not create dissension among the religious and ethnic communities, the French certainly magnified it and while they did not create hostility to foreigners, they gave the native population a target that fostered the growth of nationalism. These developments have lingered throughout the last 70 years and remain powerful forces today.

in the years after the French were forced out, coup leader after military dictator spoke in nationalist rhetoric but failed to lead his followers toward “the good life.”

for three and a half years, Syria became a part of the United Arab Republic.

Union did not work, so in 1961 Syrians were thrown back on their own resources. A fundamental problem they faced was what it meant to be a Syrian.

The more conservative, affluent, and Westernized nationalists believed that nationhood had to be built not on a religious but on a territorial base. That is, single-state nationalism (Arabic: wataniyah) was the focus of Syria’s statehood.

Their program, however, did not lead to success; its failure opened the way for a redefinition of nationalism as pan-Arab or folk nationalism (Arabic: qawmiyah). As it was codified by the Baath Party, it required that Syria be considered not a separate nation-state but a part of the whole Arab world and be domestically organized as a unified, secular, and at least partly Westernized state. This was a particularly difficult task because the dominant Muslim community, initially as a result of French rule and later as a result of domestic turbulence and foreign interference, regarded the members of the minority communities, particularly the Jewish community, as actual or potential turncoats.

as Syrians struggled for a sense of identity and came to suspect social difference and to fear the cooperation of minorities with foreigners, being an Alawi or a Christian or a Jew put people under a cloud. So, for Hafez al-Assad, the secular, nationalist Baath Party was a natural choice

Their answer was to try to bridge the gaps between rich and poor through a modified version of socialism, and between Muslims and minorities through a modified concept of Islam. Islam, in their view, needed to be considered politically not as a religion but as a manifestation of the Arab nation. Thus, the society they wished to create, they proclaimed, should be modern (with, among other things, equality for women), secular (with faith relegated to personal affairs), and defined by a culture of “Arabism” overriding the traditional concepts of ethnicity.

The “Resurrection” (Arabic: Baath) Party had its origins, like the nationalist-communist Vietnamese movement, in France. Two young Syrians, one a Christian and the other a Sunni Muslim, who were then studying in Paris were both attracted to the grandeur of France and appalled by the weakness of Syria. Like Ho Chi Minh, they wanted to both become like France and get the French out of their nation. Both believed that the future lay in unity and socialism. For Michel Aflaq and Salah Bitar, the forces to be defeated were “French oppression, Syrian backwardness, a political class unable to measure up to the challenge of the times,”

After Assad’s assault in 1982, the Syrian city of Hama looked like the Iraqi city of Fallujah after the American assault in 2004. Acres of the city were submerged under piles of rubble. But then, like Stalingrad after the German attack or Berlin after the Russian siege, reconstruction began. In a remarkable series of moves, Hafez al-Assad ordered the rubble cleared away, built new highways, constructed new schools and hospitals, opened new parks, and even, in a wholly unexpected conciliatory gesture, erected two huge new mosques. He thus made evident what had been his philosophy of government since he first took power: help the Syrian people to live better provided only that they not challenge his rule. In his thought and actions, his stern and often-brutal monopoly of power, he may be compared to the ruling men, families, parties, and establishments of Chinese, Iranian, Russian, Saudi Arabian, Vietnamese, and numerous other regimes.

Hafez al-Assad did not need to wait for leaks of documents: his intelligence services and international journalists turned up dozens of attempts by conservative, oil-rich Arab countries, the United States, and Israel to subvert his government. Most engaged in “dirty tricks,” propaganda, or infusions of money, but it was noteworthy that in the 1982 Hama uprising, more than 15,000 foreign-supplied machine guns were captured, along with prisoners including Jordanian- and CIA-trained paramilitary forces (much like the jihadists who appear so much in media accounts of 2013 Syria). And what he saw in Syria was confirmed by what he learned about Western regime-changing elsewhere.

As Iraq “imploded” in coups beginning in 1958 and morphed into Saddam Husain’s regime, the Syrians came to regard it as an enemy second only to Israel.

During the rule of the two Assads, Syria made considerable progress. By the eve of the civil war, Syrians enjoyed an income (GDP) of about $5,000 per capita. That was nearly the same as Jordan’s, roughly double the income per capita of Pakistan and Yemen, and five times the income of Afghanistan, but it is only a third that of Lebanon, Turkey, or Iran

In 2010, savaged by the great drought, GDP per capita had fallen to about $2,900, according to UN data. Before the civil war—and except in 2008 at the bottom of the drought, when it was zero—Syria’s growth rate hovered around 2 percent,

In social affairs, nearly 90 percent of Syrian children attended primary or secondary schools and between eight and nine in 10 Syrians had achieved literacy. On these measures, Syria was comparable to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Libya despite having far fewer resources to employ.

Like his father, Bashar sought to legitimize his regime through elections, but apparently he never intended, and certainly did not find, a way satisfactory (to the public) and acceptable (to his regime) of enlarged political participation.

The lack of political participation, fear of public demands, and severe police measures made the regime appear to be a tyranny

This and its hostility to Israel led to large-scale, if covert, attempts at regime change by outside powers including the United States. These acts of subversion became particularly pronounced during the second Bush administration.

between 2 and 3 million of Syria’s 10 million rural inhabitants were reduced to “extreme poverty.”  

Four years of devastating drought beginning in 2006 caused at least 800,000 farmers to lose their entire livelihood and about 200,000 simply abandoned their lands, according to the Center for Climate & Security. In some areas, all agriculture ceased. In others, crop failures reached 75 percent. And generally as much as 85 percent of livestock died of thirst or hunger. Hundreds of thousands of Syria’s farmers gave up, abandoned their farms, and fled to the cities and towns

Syria was already a refuge for a quarter of a million Palestinians and about 100,000 Iraqis who had fled the war and occupation. Formerly prosperous farmers were lucky to get jobs as hawkers or street sweepers. And in the desperation of the times, hostilities erupted among groups that were competing just to survive.

And so tens of thousands of frightened, angry, hungry, and impoverished former farmers were jammed into Syria’s towns and cities, where they constituted tinder ready to catch fire.

Instead of meeting with the protesters and at least hearing their complaints, the government saw them as subversives. The lesson of Hama must have been at the front of the mind of every member of the Assad regime. Failure to act decisively, Hama had shown, inevitably led to insurrection. Compromise could come only after order was assured. So Bashar followed the lead of his father. He ordered a crackdown. And the army, long frustrated by inaction and humiliated by its successive defeats in confrontation with Israel, responded violently. Its action backfired. Riots broke out all over the country. As they did, the government attempted to quell them with military force. It failed. So, during the next two years, what had begun as a food and water issue gradually turned into a political and religious cause.

we don’t know much about the rebels. Hundreds of groups and factions—called “brigades” even when they are just a dozen or so people—have been identified. Some observes believe that there are actually over 1,000 brigades. A reasonable guess is that, including both part-time and full-time insurgents, they number about 100,000 fighters.

In Syria, quite different causes of splits among the brigades are evident. To understand the insurgency there, we must look carefully at the causes. The basis is religion

During the course of the Assad regime, the interpretation of Islam was undergoing a profound change. This was true not only of Syria but also of understanding, practice, and action in many other areas of the world.

tens of thousands of young foreigners flocked to Syria to fight for what they see as a religious obligation (Arabic: fi sabili’llah).

in Syria, while many Muslims found the Assad regime acceptable and many even joined its senior ranks, others saw its Alawi and Christian affiliations, and even its secularism and openness to Muslim participation, insupportable.

The foreign jihadists, like the more recent nationalists, put their emphasis on a larger-than-Syria range. For them, it is a folk nationalism not only to the Arab world but also to the wider world of Islam, affecting a billion people across the globe. What they seek is a restored Islamic world, a Dar ul-Islam, or a new caliphate.

the aims of the two broad groups—the Syrians and the foreigners—have grown apart in a way similar to the split that occurred in Arab nationalism. The Syrians focus on Syria and seek the overthrow of the Assad regime much as their fathers and grandfathers focused on the task of getting the French out of their country—their watan. Their nationalism is single-country oriented

all the rebels regard the conflict in Syria as fundamentally a religious issue. Particularly for the native rebels, as I have pointed out, the religious issue is overlaid by ethnic complexities.

It would be a mistake to regard the Syrian war, as some outside observers have done, as a fight between the forces of freedom and tyranny. If the opponents of the regime are fighting for some form of democracy, they have yet to make their voices heard.

as in Afghanistan, they have fought one another over territory, access to arms, leadership, and division of spoils as bitterly as they have fought their proclaimed enemy. This fracturing has made them impossible to defeat—as the Russians experienced in Afghanistan—but also, so far at least, incapable of governing on a national scale. But they are moving in that direction.

All observers agree that the foreign-controlled and foreign-constituted insurgent groups are the most coherent, organized, and effective. This is little short of astonishing as they share no common language and come from a wide variety of cultures.

Paradoxically, governments that would have imprisoned the same activists in their own countries have poured money, arms, and other forms of aid into their coffers. The list is long and surprising in its makeup: it includes Turkey; the conservative Arab states, particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia; the EU member states; and the U.S.

The United States has a long history of covertly aiding insurgents in Syria, and has engaged in propaganda, espionage, and various sorts of dirty tricks. The rebels, naturally, have regarded the aid they’ve received as insufficient, while the government has regarded it as a virtual act of war. Both are right: it has not been on a scale that has enabled the rebels to win, but it is a form of action that, had another country engaged in it, seeking to overthrow the government, any American or European administration would have regarded as an act of war under international law.

Such covert intervention, and indeed overt intervention, is being justified on two grounds, the first being that the Syrian government is a tyranny. By Western standards, it is undoubtedly an authoritarian regime

However, the standards Western nations proclaim have been applied in a highly selective way. The EU and the U.S. enjoy cordial and mutually beneficial relations with dozens of tyrannical governments including most of the countries now attempting to regime-change Syria.              

Senior rebels have publicly threatened to carry out a genocide of the country’s main ethnic/religious minority, the Alawis. Scenes being enacted in Syria today recall the massacres and tortures of the wars of religion in 16th- and 17th-century Europe.

Most urgent in the minds of the EU and the U.S. is the second justification for intervention: the Syrian government is charged with using illegal chemical weapons. This is a very serious charge. However, doubts remain about who actually used the weapons. And, more importantly, even though the weapons are indeed horrible and are now generally considered illegal, several other states (the U.S., Israel, Egypt, and Iraq) have used them. Terrible as they are, they are only a small part of the Syrian problem—more than 99 percent of the casualties and all of the property damage in the war have been the result of conventional weapons. Getting rid of chemical weapons will neither in and of itself stop the war nor create conditions favorable to a settlement.

the cost of the war has been immense. And, of course, it is not over. We have only guesses on the total so far. One estimate is that the war has cost Syria upwards of $150 billion. Whole cities now resemble Stalingrad or Berlin in World War II. More than 2 million people have fled abroad while more than 4 million are internal refugees, remaining in Syria.

Lebanon. Even though there is little fighting there, the conflict in Syria is estimated to have cost that little country about $7.5 billion and doubled unemployment to 20 percent. About 1 million Lebanese were already judged by the World Bank as “poor,” and an additional 170,000 are now thought to have been pushed into poverty. The Syrian refugee population in the country has reached at least 1 million, making Syrians now almost a third of the total Lebanese population.

In Jordan, the story is similar. Half a million refugees are camped out there. One refugee encampment in the country houses over 100,000 people and has become Jordan’s fifth-largest city

However reprehensible the Syrian government may be in terms of democracy, it has not only given refugees and minorities protection but also maintained the part of Syria that it controls as a secular and religiously ecumenical state.

Tragic as these numbers are—the worst for nearly a century—factored into them is that Syria has lost the most precious assets of poor countries: most of the doctors and other professionals who had been painstakingly and expensively educated during the last century

Even more “costly” are the psychological traumas: a whole generation of Syrians have been subjected to either or both the loss of their homes and their trust in fellow human beings. Others will eventually suffer from the memory of what they, themselves, have done during the fighting. Comparisons are trivial and probably meaningless, but what has been enacted—is being enacted—in Syria resembles the horror of the Japanese butchery of Nanjing in World War II and the massacres in the 1994 Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Rwanda.

How the victims and the perpetrators can be returned to a “normal life” will be the lingering but urgent question of coming generations in Syria and elsewhere.

one in four or five people in the world today are Muslim: roughly 1.4 billion men, women, and children. That whole portion of the world’s population has its eyes on Syria. What happens there is likely to have a ripple effect across Asia and Africa. Thus, even though it is a small and poor country, Syria is in a sense a focal point of world affairs.

Unlike the Iraq and Afghan wars, the Syrian conflict will also have a “blowback” effect on the countries from which the Muslim fundamentalist insurgents come. It is in recognition of this fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to intervene in the Syrian war.

Even if fighting dies down, “lasting and bitter war,” like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—regardless of what American and European politicians say or even hope—will necessarily involve “boots on the ground.” That is, it will be fought with guerrilla and terrorist tactics on the rebel side against the now-typical counterinsurgency methods on the other side.

the Taliban issued a statement saying that the group “has no intention” of looting or carrying out extrajudicial killings.

But witness accounts and videos posted to social media showed some scenes of chaos. The insurgents had set fire to police buildings, and witnesses reported that jewelry shops were being looted, though by whom was unclear.

The Taliban also appeared to have freed hundreds of inmates from the city’s prison

One video showed a crowd gathered around the city’s main traffic circle, responding to the chants of a Taliban fighter. “Death to America! Death to the slaves of America!” the fighter shouted into a megaphone, as the crowd responded: “Death to Mir Alam! Death to Nabi Gechi!” Both of those men are local militia commanders fighting on the side of the government

It includes and rests upon a critical redefinition of what is known as “sex.” We usually think of this as simply male or female, on biological grounds (as opposed to a more cultural notion of gender). But the Equality Act would define “sex” as including “gender identity,” and defines “gender identity” thus: “gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or characteristics, regardless of the individual’s designated sex at birth.”

What the radical feminists are arguing is that the act doesn’t only blur the distinction between men and women (thereby minimizing what they see as the oppression of patriarchy and misogyny), but that its definition of gender identity must rely on stereotypical ideas of what gender expression means. What, after all, is a “gender-related characteristic”? It implies that a tomboy who loves sports is not a girl interested in stereotypically boyish things, but possibly a boy trapped in a female body

So instead of enlarging our understanding of gender expression — and allowing maximal freedom and variety within both sexes — the concept of “gender identity” actually narrows it, in more traditional and even regressive ways. What does “gender-related mannerisms” mean, if not stereotypes?

it bans single-sex facilities like changing, dressing, or locker rooms, if sex is not redefined to include “gender identity.” This could put all single-sex institutions, events, or groups in legal jeopardy. It could deny lesbians their own unique safe space, free from any trace of men

This is the deeply confusing and incoherent aspect of the entire debate. If you abandon biology in the matter of sex and gender altogether, you may help trans people live fuller, less conflicted lives; but you also undermine the very meaning of homosexuality.

If you follow the current ideology of gender as entirely fluid, you actually subvert and undermine core arguments in defense of gay rights. “A gay man loves and desires other men, and a lesbian desires and loves other women,” explains Sky Gilbert, a drag queen. “This defines the existential state of being gay. If there is no such thing as ‘male’ or ‘female,’ the entire self-definition of gay identity, which we have spent generations seeking to validate and protect from bigots, collapses.”

Boot argues that the U.S. should literally be the world’s policeman: “U.S. troops are … policing the frontiers of the Pax Americana. Just as the police aren’t trying to eliminate crime, so troops are not trying to eliminate terrorism but, instead, to keep it below a critical threshold that threatens the United States and our allies.”

We can respect the right of certain people to be identified as the gender they believe they are, and to remove any discrimination against them, while also seeing biology as a difference that requires a distinction.

We can believe in nature and the immense complexity of the human mind and sexuality. We can see a way to accommodate everyone to the extent possible, without denying biological reality. Equality need not mean sameness.

We just have to abandon the faddish notion that sex is socially constructed or entirely in the brain, that sex and gender are unconnected, that biology is irrelevant, and that there is something called an LGBTQ identity, when, in fact, the acronym contains extreme internal tensions and even outright contradictions.

What we may not be able to do for much longer is work profitably. If a universal basic income emerges, or if technology renders our bodies and minds unnecessary for the success of our societies, we will still need to work, to do things. But we will almost certainly have to to reimagine what work is like, what work outside of the motives of profit or efficiency can mean, what value we attach to what we do each day, and how we do it.

The world we live in is a product of a capitalism that has made us all immeasurably better off, even as it has made us more and more unequal. But that world is clearly beginning to repeal itself, to render unnecessary the vast bulk of humanity’s labor, and the vast capitalist system has only existed for a blink of an eye in humanity’s long history. We are fools if we think it will go on forever. We will have to generate a new culture of work

In fact, Boot deserves great kudos for his honesty. Richard Haass, the Pope of the Blob, deserves credit too for recognizing that “the situation on the ground is something of a slowly deteriorating stalemate … Although the U.S. and its European partners cannot expect to win the war or broker a lasting peace, it should be possible to keep the government alive and carry on the fight against terrorists.” How’s that for a pep talk!

There is a solution to this knotted paradox. We can treat different things differently. We can accept that the homosexual experience and the transgender experience are very different, and cannot be easily conflated. We can center the debate not on “gender identity” which insists on no difference between the trans and the cis, the male and the female, and instead focus on the very real experience of “gender dysphoria,” which deserves treatment and support and total acceptance for the individuals involved.

My guess is that this ever-extending police project is unstoppable in the foreseeable future. And that is true of most empires: They never unwind voluntarily. They devolve into stalemates, and collapse only when the imperial power has so bankrupted itself morally, politically, and financially that the only choice is defeat at a time not of our choosing.

its original – theological - English meaning as a lesser form of repentance that had a worldly instead of a spiritual motive, lacking the sincerity of true contrition

something second-best

Attrition was therefore established as a form of warfare to avoid, as second best to beating the enemy in a decisive battle. Exhausting an enemy through constant sniping, skirmishing and harassment took time, and increasingly made victory dependent less on the conduct of military operations and more on the underlying economic and social resilience of the nation. In addition, the process worked both ways. One’s own forces also faced attrition, turning war into a contest of endurance.

inflicting attrition on your opponent can be a sensible precursor to battle

Instead of rushing an attack, exploiting surprise, it might make more sense to opt for a more methodical approach, taking out enemy capabilities and undermining morale, before embarking on an offensive – what the Americans call ‘preparing the battlefield’.

In these circumstances, wider economic and social resilience will matter, as both sides try to produce more equipment and ammunition and find more personnel to make up losses. Once one side falters in this effort then they might lose as a result of unrest at home or a progressive inability to fight effectively

Attrition is not just a question of which side is suffering most but also who is best able to regenerate their combat capabilities.

we can note some of this war’s fundamental asymmetries that continue to shape its conduct:

First Russia has identified Ukraine’s dependence on external support as its greatest vulnerability and has been looking for ways to undermine this support, largely by aggravating the economic crises facing the West

Two conclusions emerge from these asymmetries

The second conclusion is that conditions on the ground should increasingly favour Ukraine because of the quality of the systems now entering service and the effectiveness with which they are being used

Ukraine is having to follow a strategy that works round its weaknesses while exploiting those of Russia. This was dubbed back in May as ‘corrosion’ by General Mick Ryan. Ukraine, he noted, has sought to hollow out ‘the Russian physical, moral, and intellectual capacity to fight and win in Ukraine, both on the battlefield, and in the global information environment.’

The problem with attrition is that it does not force a decision on the enemy. It works by persuading enemy forces and their political leadership that their position is untenable and likely to get worse. So long as they believe that they are only facing temporary difficulties and can turn the situation around, or at least must show that they have put up a decent fight before folding, then the war will continue

It is easy to understand why Ukraine feels that it has no choice but to carry on fighting and why it is now confident that it is slowly taking the initiative.

Moscow appears to wish to incorporate seized territory into Russia, for which they are preparing some dubious procedures that will impress nobody but themselves. Deep down for Moscow the war may now be all about denying NATO the satisfaction of a Ukrainian victory and saving Putin’s face

There is nonetheless something increasingly desperate about Russian rhetoric and behaviour. The Russian military position is deteriorating and the West’s backing for Ukraine has yet to slacken. The trends therefore favour Ukraine. At some Putin and his cronies will have to work out how long they can continue to pretend that they have a credible path to victory.

This vision involves “a mix of dependence on others and obligations to them,” Levin writes, “and so a connection with specific people with whom you share some meaningful portion of the actual experience of life.”

Levin understands the allure of nostalgia; indeed, he believes that almost all contemporary politics is based on it

These competing nostalgias, though more sophisticated than Trump’s, are no less misguided, and lead to bad politics and policy.

Sure, there is plenty to long for, Levin says. In the early decades of the post-World War II era, the United States enjoyed “relative cultural cohesion, low economic inequality, high confidence in national institutions, and widespread optimism about the nation’s prospects” (especially if you were white and male). But that was a unique pivot point in U.S. history, a time when the country was straddling two opposing forces that would define the American century: consolidation and diffusion.

The first half of the 20th century, Levin contends, was an age of consolidation, with a peerless industrial economy, a strong centralized government and a relatively uniform cultural identity shaped by a powerful mass media.

In the century’s second half, by contrast, the U.S. economy became more diversified and deregulated, while cultural conformity broke down in favor of individualism and the politics of personal identity.

for a fleeting moment at midcentury, it enjoyed the best of both. “The social, political, and economic forms of American life at midcentury made possible a degree of prosperity and cohesion that in turn enabled many Americans to flourish,”

“Democrats talk about public policy as though it were always 1965 and the model of the Great Society welfare state will answer our every concern,”

Republicans talk as though it were always 1981 and a repetition of the Reagan Revolution is the cure for what ails us.”

This stale — and stalemated — debate leaves people discouraged with politicians who don’t seem engaged with their current struggles. “In the absence of relief from their own resulting frustration, a growing number of voters opt for leaders who simply embody or articulate that frustration,”

the nostalgia of the traditional political class is also pernicious and “blinding,” Levin argues, because it keeps us from grappling with the real problems assaulting us in the age of diffusion

“In liberating many individuals from oppressive social constraints, we have also estranged many from their families and unmoored them from their communities, work, and faith,”

“Rather than decrying the collapse of moral order, we must draw people’s eyes and hearts to the alternative.” Their incessant focus on religious liberty, for example, while important, may be counterproductive, “a fundamentally plaintive and inward-looking minority asking to protect what it has and in essence to be left alone,”

In unleashing markets to meet the needs and wants of consumers, we have freed them also to treat workers as dispensable and interchangeable.

In pursuing meritocracy, we have magnified inequality.”

“In loosening the reins of cultural conformity and national identity we have weakened the roots of mutual trust.

he worries that the price of this new freedom has been high. “We have set loose a scourge of loneliness and isolation that we are still afraid to acknowledge as the distinct social dysfunction of our age of individualism, just as crushing conformity was the characteristic scourge of an era of cohesion and national unity,”

The answer to all this is the pursuit of what Levin describes as a “modernized politics of subsidiarity — that is, of putting power, authority and significance as close to the level of interpersonal community as reasonably possible.”

He is most concerned with the thicket of institutions in the middle — families, schools, religious organizations, all the things usually lumped together as civil society.

“we should see it as an effort to open up the space between them — the space where a free society can genuinely thrive.” Our objective should be to “channel power and resources to the mediating institutions of society and allow for bottom-up problem solving that takes a variety of specialized, adapted forms.”

It is a very Tocquevillian vision, with a dash of Catholic social teaching thrown in. No doubt, to yearn for the renewal of these traditional institutions is its own kind of nostalgia.

So how do we go about strengthening families, religious organizations, schools and all those mediating institutions?

He calls for a “mobility agenda,” with economic growth spurred by tax and regulatory reform

a more competitive and low-cost health-care system, lower budget deficits — all part of a standard conservative recipe.

He proposes education reform that includes more professional certificates, apprenticeships “and other ways of gaining the skills for well-paid employment that do not require a college degree.”

Levin’s intention here is less to offer detailed proposals than to shift the locus of policymaking itself — and to infuse it with greater humility. “There is not much that public policy can do,” he admits, “to create communities that do a better job of encouraging constructive behavior: it could, however, do less harm, and it could leave room for such communities to form, and protect the space in which they take root and grow.”

The result is a bifurcated America, torn between wealth and poverty, order and disorder. “Increasingly, society consists of individuals and a national state, while the mediating institutions — family, community, church, unions, and others — fade and falter.”

Instead, social and religious conservatives should “assert themselves by offering living models of their alternative to the moral culture of our hyper-individualist age.”

In other words, less hectoring and lecturing, less trying to remake the culture at large, and more strengthening one’s “near-at-hand community,” Levin writes. He calls this approach “subcultural traditionalism

he sees it in “civic groups that channel their energies into making neighborhoods safe and attractive, or into helping the poor, or protecting the vulnerable, or assimilating immigrants, or helping fight addiction

in schools that build character and inculcate the values parents think are most important; in religious congregations that mold themselves into living communities of like-minded families, and that turn their faiths into works to improve the lives of others;

in the work of teachers and students who are committed to liberal learning and engagement with the deepest questions.”

Such a localized focus, Levin maintains, is not “an alternative to fighting for the soul of the larger society, but a most effective means of doing so.”

I suspect the fulfillment of Levin’s vision would require a party and a movement that grasp the exhaustion of their current approach. A November defeat, especially a landslide, might accomplish that

The fact that they continue to talk means these are serious discussions. Where this goes, what’s the likely outcome, I think it’s really way too early to predict.”

In contrast to previous rounds of Israeli-Palestinian talks, little has leaked from the negotiating room.

Recent polls show scant optimism on the street. Palestinians are split, with 47 percent supporting the resumption of negotiations and 49 percent opposed, according to a September survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research; 70 percent think they will not lead to an agreement. Sixty-one percent of Israeli Jews back the talks, according to the Israel Democracy Institute’s Peace Index published this month, but 81 percent see no real chance of a deal.

“the negotiations are difficult but they haven’t reached a deadlock.”

“For both sides the current situation is very, very comfortable,” Mr. Beilin said. “All of us are playing the game. Many meetings, very serious, good relationship, all issues are on the agenda, fighting the lunatics on both sides, and it’s beautiful. The only problem is that there will be an end to it in the coming months, and the admission of failure might be devastating.” <img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>

She also said it had become “impossible” to predict “what will happen to the North and what actions it will take” since the purge and execution last month of Mr. Kim’s uncle, Jang Song-thaek, who was long considered Mr. Kim’s mentor and the second-highest-ranking figure in his secretive government.

South Korea halted the flow of aid and investment to the North in 2008, demanding that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons. It also curtailed inter-Korean trade following the sinking of a South Korean naval ship in 2010, which Seoul says was caused by a North Korean torpedo attack.

After months of harsh rhetoric following the North’s nuclear test last February, North and South Korea reached an agreement last August to revive the reunions. But the North later ended the talks, blaming the South for refusing to resume an inter-Korean tourism program at the North’s Diamond Mountain resort, which had been highly lucrative for Pyongyang until it was shut down in 2008.

The Korean War, which began in 1950, was fought to a stalemate and an ultimate cease-fire in 1953. Since then, no exchanges of letters, telephone calls or emails have been allowed between North and South Koreans, and family reunions remain a highly emotional issue and an indicator of the state of relations on the peninsula.

Mr. Kim made similarly conciliatory comments toward the South during his New Year’s Day speech in 2013, but they were followed by a series of provocative acts, including its February nuclear test. Just last month, Pyongyang sent a letter to Ms. Park’s office threatening “strikes without warning.”

We did not understand the enemy, a guerrilla network embedded in a quarrelsome, suspicious civilian population. We didn’t understand our own forces, which are built for rapid, decisive conventional operations, not lingering, ill-defined counterinsurgencies. We’re made for Desert Storm, not Vietnam.

those who served deserve an accounting from the generals. What happened? How? And, especially, why? It has to be a public assessment, nonpartisan and not left to the military. (We tend to grade ourselves on the curve.) Something along the lines of the 9/11 Commission is in order.

Today we are hearing some, including those in uniform, argue for a robust ground offensive against the Islamic State in Iraq. Air attacks aren’t enough, we’re told. Our Kurdish and Iraqi Army allies are weak and incompetent. Only another surge can win the fight against this dire threat. Really? If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I think we’re there.

I’d like to suggest an alternative. Maybe an incomplete and imperfect effort to contain the Islamic State is as good as it gets. Perhaps the best we can or should do is to keep it busy, “degrade” its forces, harry them or kill them, and seek the long game at the lowest possible cost. It’s not a solution that is likely to spawn a legend. But in the real world, it just may well give us something better than another defeat.

The profound emotional bond that he shared with Union soldiers and their families, and his stunning electoral success in two presidential elections, never fully inspired an equivalent level of esteem by the influential men who governed the country and guarded its official history.

To many of these men, he remained in death what he was in life: the rail-splitter and country lawyer—good, decent and ill-fitted to the immense responsibilities that befell him.

Leading into the 1864 election cycle, many prominent in Lincoln’s own party agreed with Iowa senator James Grimes that the administration “has been a disgrace from the very beginning to every one who had any thing to do with bringing it into power.”

From across the political spectrum, influential writers and politicians blamed Lincoln for four years of military stalemate and setbacks and for a series of political blunders that cost his party dearly in the 1862 midterm elections.

John Andrew, the governor of Massachusetts, spoke for many Republicans when he explained his support of Lincoln’s re-election. The president, he said, was “essentially lacking in the quality of leadership,” but now that he had been renominated, “correction is impossible...Massachusetts will vote for the Union Cause at all events and will support Mr. Lincoln so long as he remains the candidate.”

President Barack Obama praised the deal as "the most ambitious climate change agreement in history." "Beautiful," added French president Francois Hollande. "I used to say we must," commented Christiana Figueres, the United Nation's climate chief. "Today, we can say we did!"

The agreement commits the world to hold "the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels." That's an ambitious goal here in 2015, which is expected to be the hottest year on record, amid the three hottest decades on record.

Finally, the agreement pledges a minimum of $100 billion a year for developing countries to adapt to the ravages of our already overheated climate. That's an acknowledgement of the vast inequities of climate change: The fact that the richest, most powerful countries have done the most to cause climate change, yet suffer the least as a result. advertisement

But there's a whole lot of bad news in this agreement as well: It's vague. It's aspirational. And critics say it's several orders of magnitude away from being enough to avert a crisis in the decades ahead.

"The Paris Climate Agreement is not a fair, just or science-based deal," said Erich Pica, president of the eco-watchdog group Friends of the Earth. "The result is in an agreement that could see low-lying islands and coastlines swallowed up by the sea, and many African lands ravaged by drought."

Without the United States, the Allies, at best, would have fought to a stalemate.

Perhaps now the war’s centennial will encourage Americans to reexamine their nation’s part in the Great War. Perhaps they’ll rediscover that America’s role was, in fact, indispensable.

Gaddis keeps pounding — to the point of monotony — the seemingly self-evident: The grand strategist must prune away emotion, ego and conventional wisdom to accept that “if you seek ends beyond your means, then sooner or later you’ll have to scale back your ends to fit your means.

Their implicit idea is to remind America’s future best and brightest how the mostly successful grand strategy of the past saw America become the pre-eminent world power of the 20th century by winning two world conflicts along with the Cold War.

The case studies are variously drawn from some 16 years of co-teaching a well-regarded seminar on “Studies in Grand Strategy” at Yale

Paul Kennedy’s edited “Grand Strategies in War and Peace,” Charles Hill’s “Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order” and more recently Linda Kulman’s “Teaching Common Sense: The Grand Strategy Program at Yale University.”

His repetitious observation about proportionality might have been banal — if so many leaders, many of them geniuses, had not forgotten it

A recurrent theme is the danger of omnipresent hubris. Even a great power cannot master the unexpected and uncontrollable — from the great plague at Athens, to the harsh Russian winter, to I.E.D.s and tribal factionalism in Iraq

The book is as much personal remembrance as strategic reflection, and is chock-full of aphorisms and enigmatic adages.

Gaddis believes the best way to hone strategic thinking is not just by mastering the advice of Machiavelli or Clausewitz (who both figure prominently in the class), much less contemporary high-tech wizardry, but also by understanding the interplay of history, literature and philosophy over 2,500 years of Western civilization — with occasional insights from Sun Tzu and other non-Western thinkers

In some sense “On Grand Strategy” is a traditional argument for the value of classical education in the broadest sense.

The student of strategy learns to balance a grasp of detail with proper humility: It is, of course, wise to have a plan and contingencies. But how will these prompt rival counter-responses? Do such agendas have the means adequate for their ends? Or are they more dreams, warped by ego and emotion

In contrast, the often arrogant neglect of grand strategic thinking has led to postwar quagmires, stalemates and the assorted misadventures that often drained American resources for either impossible or irrelevant aims, while tearing the country apart over the last 70 years.

Understanding the underappreciated role of irony is essential for a leader, and might have prevented the disasters of both 415 B.C. and 1588.

Tolstoy and Clausewitz appreciated that bad things can come from good intentions and vice versa. The best generals live with and react to paradoxes, Gaddis argues. The worst ignore or seek to undo them.

Gaddis sees these more successful global strategists as rope-a-dope pragmatists who remain elastic and patient enough to capitalize on events and opportunities as they unfold, rather than forcing them to fit preconceived schemes.

Morality matters, if defined less as self-righteous ardor and more as self-awareness of a leader’s effect on those around him and an appreciation of paradox.

A pragmatic St. Augustine has no problem with war — if it is a last resort to save civilization, without which there can be neither calm nor organized religion.

Still, courting calculated risk is essential

The gambler Winston Churchill took chances in 1940, albeit rational ones backed by educated guesses that, for all Hitler’s bluster, the Third Reich had neither the air nor sea power to destroy the Anglosphere

Gaddis’s American heroes are Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, who he thinks “rescued democracy and capitalism.”

Roosevelt somehow was cognizant early on of how the singular military and economic potential of America might save Europe and Asia, but only if he first prepared reluctant Americans materially and psychologically for the inevitable war to come

Gaddis concludes with an invaluable warning that true morality embraces neither messianic interventionism nor the quest for utopianism

Instead, ethical leadership pursues the art of the possible for the greater (not the greatest) good

With regard to the American 21st century, Gaddis’s favorite novelists and philosophers perhaps argue against both optional intercessions abroad and moralistic lead-from-behind recessionals. The better course is to marshal American power to prepare for the often unavoidable existential crises on the horizon, with the full expectation that we do not have to be perfect to be good.

“On Grand Strategy” is many things — a thoughtful validation of the liberal arts, an argument for literature over social science, an engaging reflection on university education and some timely advice to Americans that lasting victory comes from winning what you can rather than all that you want.

It might fairly be asked why the Emperor Charles V did not dispose of the Valois challenge more quickly.

In 1519 he was elected Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of Germany

Francis, in turn, harboured a deep-seated resentment against Charles

The kingdom had recently been consolidated by the incorporation of great provinces like Burgundy and Brittany

This explains why the history of the Habsburg-Valois rivalry is one where intensive periods of bloody fighting were followed so often by stalemate and financial exhaustion

The two kings [Henry II and Philip II] realised that if they attempted to mount another campaign in 1559, they might stretch their finances and the loyalty of their subjects to breaking point

In waging war he could only really rely on the financial support of the Netherlands and Castile, and as the Habsburg-Valois wars persisted he, and his successor Philip II, found himself plundering both territories to their absolute limits

Francis's successor, Henry II, had spent three years as a hostage of the Habsburgs in Spain, after the Treaty of Madrid, and as King of France from 1547 he exhibited an animosity to the Habsburgs that perhaps exceeded even that of his father

Much of the Habsburg-Valois rivalry revolved around rival ambitions in Italy

Habsburg-Valois conflict to an end was that the conflict was essentially a dynastic one; the rivalry was between two proud ruling families who were determined to protect the achievements of their forbears and to enhance the reputation and power of their family, or dynasty

This helps to explain why the House of Habsburg and the House of Valois persisted for so long in their conflict with such a disregard for the damaging consequences to their lands and peoples

In the mind of the young Charles V, no family ambition loomed larger than that of recovering his ancestral lands of Burgundy from the French

Charles believed that he had triumphantly achieved his great dynastic dream in 1526, when the defeated and captive Francis I agreed to surrender the territory in the Treaty of Madrid

The impression is often given that Charles abandoned his claim to Burgundy in the Peace of Cambrai in 1529

Thus for Charles V his personal rivalry with Francis I was overlaid by a sense of injustice at what he perceived to be the theft of his family's Burgundian inheritance by the Valois kings

It was also here that the deeply felt dynastic rivalry between the Houses of Habsburg and Valois was at its most acute. Throughout the long conflict the French chafed at Habsburg control of the kingdom of Naples

Charles V consequently acquired Naples when he inherited the kingdom of Aragon in1516

Francis and his successor Henry II continued to press French claims to Naples

The House of Valois did periodically renounce its claim when peace with the Habsburgs was expedient or unavoidable

Francis I's successor, Henry II, continued to uphold the Valois claim and in 1557 launched a final and unavailing assault on the kingdom.

The House of Valois felt strongly that they had the strongest dynastic claim to the Duchy of Milan

When Charles V had acquired his extensive empire by 1519 he regarded Milan not only as a satellite of the Empire

The Habsburg-Valois wars were, then, to a very significant extent, an unremitting struggle for mastery over Milan

The conflict between the Habsburgs and the Valois appeared at times to escalate into something approaching a general European war. The German Protestants, the lesser powers of Europe and even the superpower of the Ottoman empire were all drawn into the fray at various times

Henry VIII of England took a distinctly opportunistic view of the conflict. When he was anxious to undermine Habsburg predominance in Europe he sided with the French

The continuation of the Habsburg-Valois conflict was also a tremendous boon to the Ottoman Sultan. He aimed to extend Muslim Ottoman power into Europe. The major obstacle to expansion were, firstly, the Austrian Habsburg lands in central Europe, ruled by Charles V's brother Ferdinand, and, secondly, the military and naval presence of the Habsburgs in the Mediterranean

the Sultan was brought into an anti- Habsburg alliance by the French firstly in 1536 and, later, in 1542

Huge nuclear arsenals made it necessary to consider both the instantaneous and the endless: the decisive moment when mutually assured destruction is potentially set in motion, the frozen stalemate of the superpower stand-off, and the long catastrophe of a post-nuclear future.

The power of an individual decision was now outrageously amplified – the finger on the nuclear button – yet, at the same time, radically diminished in the face of unfathomable forces,

The world had become too complex and too dangerous

During the second half of the 20th century, many fields of enquiry from anthropology, political theory and analytical philosophy to art, music and literature were influenced by the explosion in interdisciplinary thinking that emerged from developments in cybernetics and its relationship with Cold War military research and development.

The practice of engaging with the connections and interactions between disparate elements of a problem or entity conceived as a system, and between such systems, is now commonplace in areas such as corporate strategy, town planning and environmental policy.

The pervasiveness of a systems approach also influenced the arts.

attempts to grasp the complex interconnectedness of society, and often the effects of technology and progress upon it.

Systems thinking offered a means of conceptualising and understanding a world that had grown hugely more complex and dangerous.

Nuclear weapons demanded radical new ways of thinking about time, scale, power, death, responsibility and, most of all, control – control of technology, people, information and ideas.

We are now accustomed to thinking about the current moment in global terms – globalisation, global warming, global communications, global security.

Everyday life is firewalled and password-protected. We move under a canopy of invisible cameras and sensors, where our personal details and likenesses, our associations, preferences and transactions lie waiting to be called upon – by friends, strangers, employers or snoops. And so what? We all do it – we are already conscripted

This is a world produced by the Cold War, by the anxieties and energies that found expression in the laboratories, boardrooms, government offices, think-tanks and universities tasked with managing a permanent state of emergency. The geopolitics may be different, but the technology, infrastructure, and worldview that built up and hardened during the Cold War era are still with us, embodied in the everyday devices we take for granted, and the precarious identities they suggest.

Normalised surveillance, generalised anxiety, an obsession with security, nationalised identities, pervasive suspicion and secrecy, spectacular military technology and proxy wars, spies, whistleblowers, and the enemy within.

Cold War marked the “end of history” – the great ideological struggles were over and Western liberal democracy had won, according to his thesis.

The world we are in is, in many ways, the world the Cold War made for us.

New technologies of war, such as heavy bombers and long-range missiles like the V-2 rocket, reduced distances of time and space. In recognition of this new state of affairs, in 1942 the

what happens when an extraordinarily rich society can’t find enough new ideas that justify investing all its stockpiled wealth. We inflate bubbles and then pop them, invest in Theranos and then repent, and the supposed cutting edge of capitalism is increasingly defined by technologies that have almost arrived, business models that are on their way to profitability, by runways that go on and on without the plane achieving takeoff.

what this tells us, unfortunately, is that 21st-century growth and innovation are not at all that we were promised they would be.

slowly compounding growth is not the same as dynamism. American entrepreneurship has been declining since the 1970s: Early in the Jimmy Carter presidency, 17 percent of all United States businesses had been founded in the previous year; by the start of Barack Obama’s second term, that rate was about 10 percent. In the late 1980s, almost half of United States companies were “young,” meaning less than five years old; by the Great Recession, that share was down to only 39 percent, and the share of “old” firms (founded more than 15 years ago) rose from 22 percent to 34 percent over a similar period

From World War II through the 1980s, according to a recent report from Senator Marco Rubio’s office, private domestic investment often approached 10 percent of G.D.P.; in 2019, despite a corporate tax cut intended to get money off the sidelines, the investment-to-G.D.P. ratio was less than half of that.

This suggests that the people with the most experience starting businesses look around at their investment opportunities and see many more start-ups that resemble Theranos than resemble Amazon, let alone the behemoths of the old economy.

the dearth of corporate investment also means that the steady climb of the stock market has boosted the wealth of a rentier class — basically, already-rich investors getting richer off dividends — rather than reflecting surging prosperity in general.

In 2017 a group of economists published a paper asking, “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” The answer was a clear yes: “We present a wide range of evidence from various industries, products, and firms showing that research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply.”

In his 2011 book “The Great Stagnation,” Tyler Cowen cited an analysis from the Pentagon physicist Jonathan Huebner, who modeled an innovations-to-population ratio for the last 600 years: It shows a slowly ascending arc through the late 19th century, when major inventions were rather easy to conceive and adopt, and a steepening decline ever since, as rich countries spend more and more on research to diminishing returns.

the trends reveal a slowdown, a mounting difficulty in achieving breakthroughs — a bottleneck if you’re optimistic, a ceiling if you aren’t

the relative exception, the internet and all its wonders, highlights the general pattern.

The Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon, one of the most persuasive theorists of stagnation, points out that the period from 1840 to 1970 featured dramatic growth and innovation across multiple arenas — energy and transportation and medicine and agriculture and communication and the built environment.

in the last two generations, progress has become increasingly monodimensional — all tech and nothing else.

Take a single one of the great breakthroughs of the industrial age — planes and trains and automobiles, antibiotics and indoor plumbing — and it still looms larger in our everyday existence than all of the contributions of the tech revolution combined.

We used to travel faster, build bigger, live longer; now we communicate faster, chatter more, snap more selfies.

With this stagnation comes social torpor. America is a more peaceable country than it was in 1970 or 1990, with lower crime rates and safer streets and better-behaved kids

it’s also a country where that supposedly most American of qualities, wanderlust, has markedly declined: Americans no longer “go west” (or east or north or south) in search of opportunity the way they did 50 years ago; the rate at which people move between states has fallen from 3.5 percent in the early 1970s to 1.4 percent in 2010. Nor do Americans change jobs as often as they once did.

Meanwhile, those well-behaved young people are more depressed than prior cohorts, less likely to drive drunk or get pregnant but more tempted toward self-harm

For adults, the increasingly legal drug of choice is marijuana, whose prototypical user is a relaxed and harmless figure — comfortably numb, experiencing stagnation as a chill good time.

then there is the opioid epidemic, whose spread across the unhappiest parts of white America passed almost unnoticed in elite circles for a while because the drug itself quiets rather than inflames, supplying a gentle euphoria that lets its users simply slip away, day by day and bit by bit, without causing anyone any trouble

In the land of the lotus eaters, people are also less likely to invest in the future in the most literal of ways. The United States birthrate was once an outlier among developed countries, but since the Great Recession, it has descended rapidly, converging with the wealthy world’s general below-replacement norm.

This demographic decline worsens economic stagnation; economists reckoning with its impact keep finding stark effects. A 2016 analysis found that a 10 percent increase in the fraction of the population over 60 decreased the growth rate of states’ per capita G.D.P. by 5.5 percent.

This doesn’t excuse the grifting or the rage stoking, especially presidential grifting and rage stoking, and it doesn’t make the mass shootings, when they come, any less horrific. But it’s important context for thinking about whether online politics is really carrying our society downward into civil strife

This feedback loop — in which sterility feeds stagnation, which further discourages childbearing, which sinks society ever-deeper into old age — makes demographic decline a clear example of how decadence overtakes a civilization

Both populism and socialism, Trump and Bernie Sanders, represent expressions of discontent with decadence, rebellions against the technocratic management of stagnation that defined the Obama era.

in practical terms the populist era has mostly delivered a new and deeper stalemate. From Trump’s Washington to the capitals of Europe, Western politics is now polarized between anti-establishment forces that are unprepared to competently govern and an establishment that’s too disliked to effectively rule.

The hysteria with which we’re experiencing them may represent nothing more than the way that a decadent society manages its political passions, by encouraging people to playact extremism, to re-enact the 1930s or 1968 on social media, to approach radical politics as a sport, a hobby, a kick to the body chemistry, that doesn’t put anything in their relatively comfortable late-modern lives at risk.

The terrorist in 21st-century America isn’t the guy who sees more deeply than the rest; he’s the guy who doesn’t get it, who takes the stuff he reads on the internet literally in a way that most of the people posting don’t

once we crossed over into permanent below-replacement territory, the birth dearth began undercutting the very forces (youth, risk -taking, dynamism) necessary for continued growth, meaning that any further gains to individual welfare are coming at the future’s expense.

It suggests that the virtual realm might make our battles more ferocious but also more performative and empty; and that online rage is a steam-venting technology for a society that is misgoverned, stagnant and yet, ultimately, far more stable than it looks on Twitter

in the real world, it’s possible that Western society is leaning back in an easy chair, hooked up to a drip of something soothing, playing and replaying an ideological greatest-hits tape from its wild and crazy youth.

Human beings can still live vigorously amid a general stagnation, be fruitful amid sterility, be creative amid repetition. And the decadent society, unlike the full dystopia, allows those signs of contradictions to exist

The last hundred-odd years of Western history offer plenty of examples of how the attempt to throw off decadence can bring in far worse evils, from the craving for Meaning and Action that piled corpses at Verdun and Passchendaele, to the nostalgic yearning for the Cold War that inspired post-9/11 crusading and led to a military quagmire in the Middle East.

So you can even build a case for decadence, not as a falling-off or disappointing end, but as a healthy balance between the misery of poverty and the dangers of growth for growth’s sake

A sustainable decadence, if you will, in which the crucial task for 21st-century humanity would be making the most of a prosperous stagnation: learning to temper our expectations and live within limits; making sure existing resources are distributed more justly; using education to lift people into the sunlit uplands of the creative class; and doing everything we can to help poorer countries transition successfully into our current position

this argument carries you only so far. Even if the dystopia never quite arrives, the longer a period of stagnation continues, the narrower the space for fecundity and piety, memory and invention, creativity and daring.

So decadence must be critiqued and resisted

by the hope that where there’s stability, there also might eventually be renewal,

The next renaissance will be necessarily different, but realism about our own situation should make us more inclined, not less, to look and hope for one — for the day when our culture feels more fruitful, our politics less futile and the frontiers that seem closed today are opened once again.

The United States has not been directly involved in the illicit arms race. But it bears responsibility for the mess by bailing out of the conflict soon after Colonel el-Qaddafi was overthrown and killed

In any event, a major infusion of military support for the Government of National Accord by Turkey blunted Mr. Hifter’s offensive, leading to a cease-fire in October, the convening of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum in November and the appointment of an interim administration.

Peace in Libya matters for reasons beyond its own sake. The country has huge reserves of oil, and the anarchy of the past decade has made it a prime jumping-off point for refugees seeking to flee to Europe across the Mediterranean. Shortly after leaving the White House, former President Barack Obama declared in an interview that the failure to plan for the aftermath of Colonel el-Qaddafi’s exit was the “worst mistake” of his presidency.

The interests of the foreign powers range from avarice to influence, and given the vast resources they have invested in Libya, they no doubt stand ready to resume their meddling if the peace process collapses. But they also appear to appreciate that they and their clients have fought to a stalemate, and that reverting to their zero-sum game might be futile.

here’s a glimmer of hope.

id Dbeibah, a billionaire who was a close associate of Colonel el-Qaddafi, stands accused of buying the votes that gave him the job. The interim team and the cabinet it proposes need to survive a vote of confidence in a House of Representatives that is also split in two, one side based in Tobruk and the other in

This peace process is the best chance to date to put Libya together again. Libyans are thoroughly sick of the fighting, banditry and destruction that have plagued their country for a decade, and tired of the foreign powers and mercenaries who have spread death across the land, much of it through armed drones. The U.N. estimates there are now at least 20,000 mercenaries in Libya.

statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month praised Ms. Williams for her “creativity and tenacity” in facilitating the process, and declared that the United States “supports the Libyan vision of a peaceful, prosperous and unified Libya with an inclusive government that can both secure the country and meet the economic and humanitarian needs of it

But amid growing tensions with the United States and its Western allies, Russian forces have again been spotted on the move across the border sparking concerns the war may be reignited.

Cell phone video has emerged of Russian armored columns driving towards the Ukrainian frontier.

In Moscow, the Kremlin says the troop movements are inside Russia, part of a planned military exercise and pose no threat.

the Ukrainian President told CNN a Russian invasion is a very real possibility his country is bracing for

"They are ready, but we are also ready because we are on our land and our territory," he told CNN.

Lt. Gen. Ruslan Khomchak, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, told CNN an estimated 50,000 Russian troops have now gathered across the Russian border and in Crimea.

there are at least 35,000 Russian-backed separatists in rebel-held areas of Ukraine

Even before this current worrying build up in the number of troops at Moscow's command on Ukraine's doorstep, Zelensky called for the US to sell it weapons,

Those weapons have now been delivered

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that there are "real concerns" over Russia's action.

"The question is, 'Is Russia going to continue to act aggressively and recklessly?

Military helicopters, deafening old MI-8s first developed during the Soviet era, painted in unnaturally vivid combat camouflage, fly fast and low over the countryside to avoid ground fire. Every few minutes they lurch upwards to leapfrog trees or electricity lines, then quickly plunge back down again within feet of the soil.

On board the aging presidential chopper, which retains a degree of well-worn comfort, Zelensky shouts above the engine noise of how the US is a "good friend" of Ukraine,

President Biden "must do more," to deter Russia

"If they [the US] see Ukraine in NATO, they have to say it directly, and do it. Not words," Zelensky told CNN.

With or without NATO, this is his country's reality. Ukraine is at war.

It's "a return to business as usual for DOJ -- and not DOJ swinging as frantically to an anti-Trump agenda as it did to the pro-Trump one that I and many other observers abhorred,"

"I appreciate the independence. I don't always agree with the positions," said Eisen, who would like to see more released by the Justice Department. "They're going to act with that same independence in defense of what they perceive to be in the long-term interests of the executive branch."

The Biden administration now has control over three high-profile documents that are still central to Democrats' court fights related to Trump: Trump's tax returns, held by the IRS; grand jury material underpinning the Russia investigation; and the key internal memo to former Attorney General William Barr justifying the decision not to charge Trump with obstruction in former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Trump's taxes have been the white whale of Democratic investigators for years,

Trump's tax returns are no longer completely under lock and key, either. The Manhattan district attorney obtained them earlier this year through a lawsuit of his own.

In late April, federal agents executed search warrants on Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. Democrats have also received some documents related to Trump's Washington hotel lease that the Trump administration had kept hidden. And on Friday, House Democrats will finally get the chance to interview former White House counsel Don McGahn about Trump's efforts to obstruct justice.

But the department is now fighting to keep redacted six-and-a-half pages of legal analysis on whether a criminal case against the then-President was merited, even if he could not be charged under Justice Department policy.

Congressional Democrats urged Garland not to appeal the judge's decision.

"There is this institutional rivalry between executive and legislative branches that overlays or perhaps underlays the misbehavior that the judge found within the department,"

The Justice Department's stance shouldn't be a surprise, given that Biden came into office with a team that was vowing to move on from the Trump-era controversies.

The House committees that investigated Trump, however, have vowed to keep pursuing their cases that are tied up in court.

The Supreme Court was set to hear an appeal from the administration as it sought to keep grand jury documents cited in the Mueller report under seal, after the House won access in court. That hearing has been postponed.

The House's push for financial documents and Trump's tax returns has another obstacle beyond the Biden administration: Trump himself. The former President's involvement in the cases, now as a private citizen who has several teams of lawyers protecting his interests, may be one reason for the stalemates.